The oldest known [cough... African... cough] ant
Here’s a perfect example of what I like about blogs becoming an integral communication tool for the scientific community and interested folks alike:
Cretaceous African ant in amber (Courtesy of Vincent Perrichot via http://myrmecos.wordpress.com)
- A peer-review paper gets published;
- The media gets hold on the story;
- The blogs react: scientists and general public fill the comments section (in the genuine tone of the internets);
- The authors of the original paper join in the discussion.
Discussion may get heated, comments may get bitter, but the results are always rewarding for all.
8 Comments to The oldest known [cough... African... cough] ant
I would now like to run a control, where I disagree with a paper without the snark. Would the paper’s authors show up for discussion anyway? Or is being a jerk on the internet necessary to the process?
OMG, did you just call me a jerk!?
(You see Alex, there’s no way of not getting misinterpreted on the internet.)
Now, as you may know already, getting blog attention is already one of the parameters used to rank individual papers in some of the leading electronic journals in our field: scroll down to the Blog Coverage section. It is on the bests interest of authors to show up for discussion. I see this trend becoming more prevalent (wait, that’s the definition of a trend… oh well).
Vincent Perrichot April 7, 2010
Now I have to play the bad guy (again?) and denounce your title: it’s not the oldest know ant, there are older sphecomyrmines from French and Burmese ambers. Well, ok, it may be the oldest ant of an extant subfamily… But pff, this is so much more fun to deal with extinct lineages 
More seriously, I did like the development of the discussion here and on Myrmecos, both excellent blogs I have been visiting regularly before this episode. The policies and limited space in PNAS and relatives are very unfortunate, and it was really impossible to justify our placement in the main text; I guess it’s the prize for publishing in such journals but it could have been emphasized in the supplement material indeed. To keep in mind for future work…
You are more than welcome to play the bad guy on this blog anytime you want.
Sure, James – I didn’t mean to suggest that I alone knew it was an ant, only that now knowing its aspect it is suddenly quite clear
April 7, 2010